temujin
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After reading responses to the Babri judgement I am compelled to post this..
As a long term lurker and a new member of this forum,I am intrigued at how some members are quick to blame 'foreign hands', and spout conspiracy theories involving CIA/RAW/Mossad, Hindus and Jews etc, with little substantive evidence, for everything that goes wrong in Pakistan or the rest of the muslim world. They are quick to point at the 'Indian link' in relation to Pakistani Taliban (Jeez!!Can you not see that the TPP views the current Pakistani political system and legal system as shirk and consider you lot munafiqs??). An Indian hand is seen even in the spot fixing scandal and now an extremely fair and sensible judgment on the Babri dispute is shouted down as an evil Hindoo conspiracy to snatch land away from persecuted muslims.
I had assumed that such forums help promote understanding between the people of two nations who view each other as adversaries but reading comments and observing the belligerent attitude of some of the posters, I see a bunch on people with entrenched views, stuck in the paranoid schizoid position of psychic development, with a pervasive and inexplicable hate of the 'other' (Hindu/Jew/West/RAW/Mossad etc etc). Various arguments, ludicrously bigoted and racist to the extent they would get you arrested if aired in public, are forwarded to reinforce the "difference" between "us" and "them".
More on the paranoid schizoid position..
Paranoid-schizoid position - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quite how a large group of people collectively experience a reversion to this maladaptive cognitive pattern is fascinating in itself. Although such thinking can be ego protective and a means of coping with deep seated anxieties and insecurities about the painful reality, it certainly does not augur well for better relations between India and Pakistan or in fact the wider muslim world and the 'others'.
I've always wondered why conspiracy theories gain such huge currency in certain societies, how a sense of collective persecution borne out of immature, neurotic psychic defenses can take hold of entire populations (bar a few rational voices that are even present here on the forum).
Some recent articles on the conspiracy theory culture in Pakistan..
‘The Zionists did it’ and other conspiracy theories – The Express Tribune Blog
‘The Zionists did it’ and other conspiracy theories
I’ve heard more conspiracy theories these past couple of weeks than I would like to care for. It seems that the Zionists, Freemasons and Indian spy agency RAW have been collaborating on a series of coordinated strikes on me and my small yet suspiciously detrimental-to-the-future-of-the-world social circle.
Conspiracy 1: Did you know that there were four Blackwater (now called Xe but we still like the old name because it sounds more evil) agents on board the doomed Air Blue flight? Presumably they were forcing the pilot to crash into the nearby Kahuta nuclear base but the heroic pilot crashed into the mountains to spoil their plans.
Conspiracy 2: Did you know that the floods that washed away most of Pakistan were actually the by-product of US Military’s secret HAARP project which specialises in weather control and other sinister forms of kooky warfare?
Conspiracy 3: Did you know that the Indian Cricket Board, presumably funded by the country’s ever-scheming intelligence agencies, framed the Pakistani team in that spot-fixing spat?
Conspiracy 4: Did you know that Osama bin Laden is living in Washington DC, enjoying Jersey Shore reruns with some friends while munching on pizza?
Conspiracy 5: Did you know that Dr Aafia Siddiqi was secretly sabotaged by the Pakistani government and that the guys in Islamabad got a big fat cheque for helping ‘set an example out for muslims worldwide’?
Believe it or not, I heard all these morsels of hidden truth in the space of maybe three to four days.
Here’s what I know: We’re not the centre of the world. The centre of paranoia, maybe, but not much else. We need to stop blaming other, secret forces for our troubles. No, they are not out to get us. We just need a scapegoat so that we can pin our troubles and general lack of progression on someone.
But then again, you never know. I’m probably commissioned by the Jewish lobby to lull the Pakistani public into a false sense of security.
This article from February 2010 paints a scary picture of a nuclear armed state rife with conspiracy theories..
Pakistan: Conspiracy Talk Stokes Anti-American Sentiment - TIME
Pakistanis See a Vast U.S. Conspiracy Against Them
From the Pakistani army barracks to the roadside chai stands along the Indus River where truckers gulp down cups of muddy tea, anti-Americanism is roiling across the country. It is whipped up by the often sensationalist, ratings-hungry Pakistani TV news talk shows — think of Fox News cranked up to full volume, in Urdu. It resounds from the mosques, in virulent anti-U.S. sermons during Friday prayers. But most ominously, according to Islamabad observers, this deep suspicion of America's intentions in the region seems to be shared by elements within Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence services.
Here's a sample of a few conspiracy theories making the rounds: the U.S. military has a secret plan to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal; more than 9,000 agents of Blackwater, the U.S. security company, now called Xe Services, are roaming the country like bogeymen, at the CIA's behest, kidnapping people and setting off bombs that are later blamed on Pakistani Taliban militants; B-52 bombers are constantly circling the skies over Pakistan, waiting to strike when the signal is given (to strike what is never exactly clear from the rumors). (See a video about bomb threats against Pakistani schoolchildren.)
Even as the wild speculation circulates, U.S. diplomats are harassed in real life by Pakistani authorities. Their vehicles are seized and their visas tangled in bureaucratic red tape for months, crippling aid projects and counterinsurgency efforts. Sometimes photos of their residences are published in newspapers and labeled as CIA dens. American journalists, too, are singled out. Last October, an English-language Lahore newspaper, The Nation, accused a Wall Street Journal correspondent of working simultaneously for the CIA, the Israeli spy agency Mossad and, to top it off, Blackwater. A Pakistani daily also ran a photo of two British and Australian journalists at the site of a suicide bombing and insinuated that they were foreign spies.
This anti-U.S. resentment strikes many in Washington as a tad ungrateful — not to mention misplaced — given that last fall, Congress enacted the Kerry-Lugar bill granting Pakistan over $7.5 billion in economic aid over the next five years. In addition, Pakistan receives military hardware and training to combat Pakistani Taliban — whose wrath is focused on Islamabad — in the mountainous borderlands with Afghanistan.
So what gives?
Pakistan has long been characterized as a country whose rulers may be pro-American but whose people are decidedly not. In 1979, for example, Pakistani radio falsely reported that U.S. aircraft bombed Islam's holiest site in Mecca, prompting a mob to storm the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, killing five American and Pakistani staffers. This simmering hostility was stirred again after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and boiled over, more recently, with drone missile strikes inside Pakistan's tribal territory in which dozens of suspected terrorists — and civilians — died. The Feb. 3 conviction in New York City of a Pakistani woman scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, nicknamed Lady al-Qaeda, on charges of trying to shoot Americans in Afghanistan has also ignited anger in Pakistan against the U.S. The verdict was decried by Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and lawmakers and sparked anti-U.S. protest rallies in Lahore. (See the case against Aafia Siddiqui.)
On top of that, Washington's latest act of largesse, the Kerry-Lugar bill, has unintentionally riled the Pakistani army. The billions came with strings attached. The generals opposed one of the conditions of the bill: that the U.S. must be satisfied that the Pakistani military was fighting terrorism and not, as the legislation said, "subverting the political and judicial processes of Pakistan." Says Talat Masood, a retired general and military analyst in Islamabad: "Some in the army think this is intrusive and a loss to our sovereignty."
Islamabad politicians and diplomats say that the military opposes any measure that might boost the current President, who was swept into power in 2008 on a sympathy vote for his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, assassinated the previous year. Zardari has been dogged by old corruption charges and his current administration has proved highly unpopular, allowing the army to take a commanding role in security and foreign affairs, and that includes dealing with Washington.(See the difficulties Pakistani journalists had covering the Siddiqui trial.)
The conditions for a perfect storm of anti-U.S. feeling have risen, according to Samina Ahmed, director for the International Crisis Group in Islamabad. "What we're seeing is a nexus between an irresponsible media, the mullahs and the military, which is using anti-Americanism to beat a weak civilian government on the head," she says. Ahmed suggests that while the Obama Administration may need the generals' support in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda — who have sanctuaries inside Pakistan's tribal territories — it should not falter in trying to prop up the country's civil institutions. Otherwise, she says, the root causes of illiteracy and poverty that have given rise to militancy in the country will never be tackled, and Pakistan will remain in its downward spiral.
Meanwhile, U.S. diplomats in Islamabad, instead of ignoring the outlandish whoppers on local TV news channels, are moving more swiftly to deny them before they spread and gain credence. Military analyst Masood suggests that the U.S. State and Defense officials who are constantly shuttling to Islamabad should offer the military assurance that Washington has no intention of meddling with their nuclear arsenal or with their defenses against rival neighbor India. "The Americans have to take measures that lower the paranoia. They have to persuade the army that the U.S. is not after Pakistan's nukes," he says. Given the fever pitch of suspicion that Pakistanis feel toward the U.S. these days, that may take a lot of persuasion.
So what would it take for Pakistanis and many other middle eastern societies to snap out of this pervasive siege mentality? I don't think solving Kashmir to its satisfaction will do the trick for Pakistan as the hate of India, Hindus, Jews etc is not essentially driven by territorial or theological disputes but by a powerful death instinct which defines Pakistan's identity, and in the Pakistani psyche, its survival..
Sorry for the rant but its my day off and I was absolutely exasperated by the comments on what I thought was a fair verdict on Babri (Mandir/Masjid side by side etc)
Peace
As a long term lurker and a new member of this forum,I am intrigued at how some members are quick to blame 'foreign hands', and spout conspiracy theories involving CIA/RAW/Mossad, Hindus and Jews etc, with little substantive evidence, for everything that goes wrong in Pakistan or the rest of the muslim world. They are quick to point at the 'Indian link' in relation to Pakistani Taliban (Jeez!!Can you not see that the TPP views the current Pakistani political system and legal system as shirk and consider you lot munafiqs??). An Indian hand is seen even in the spot fixing scandal and now an extremely fair and sensible judgment on the Babri dispute is shouted down as an evil Hindoo conspiracy to snatch land away from persecuted muslims.
I had assumed that such forums help promote understanding between the people of two nations who view each other as adversaries but reading comments and observing the belligerent attitude of some of the posters, I see a bunch on people with entrenched views, stuck in the paranoid schizoid position of psychic development, with a pervasive and inexplicable hate of the 'other' (Hindu/Jew/West/RAW/Mossad etc etc). Various arguments, ludicrously bigoted and racist to the extent they would get you arrested if aired in public, are forwarded to reinforce the "difference" between "us" and "them".
More on the paranoid schizoid position..
Paranoid-schizoid position - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quite how a large group of people collectively experience a reversion to this maladaptive cognitive pattern is fascinating in itself. Although such thinking can be ego protective and a means of coping with deep seated anxieties and insecurities about the painful reality, it certainly does not augur well for better relations between India and Pakistan or in fact the wider muslim world and the 'others'.
I've always wondered why conspiracy theories gain such huge currency in certain societies, how a sense of collective persecution borne out of immature, neurotic psychic defenses can take hold of entire populations (bar a few rational voices that are even present here on the forum).
Some recent articles on the conspiracy theory culture in Pakistan..
‘The Zionists did it’ and other conspiracy theories – The Express Tribune Blog
‘The Zionists did it’ and other conspiracy theories
I’ve heard more conspiracy theories these past couple of weeks than I would like to care for. It seems that the Zionists, Freemasons and Indian spy agency RAW have been collaborating on a series of coordinated strikes on me and my small yet suspiciously detrimental-to-the-future-of-the-world social circle.
Conspiracy 1: Did you know that there were four Blackwater (now called Xe but we still like the old name because it sounds more evil) agents on board the doomed Air Blue flight? Presumably they were forcing the pilot to crash into the nearby Kahuta nuclear base but the heroic pilot crashed into the mountains to spoil their plans.
Conspiracy 2: Did you know that the floods that washed away most of Pakistan were actually the by-product of US Military’s secret HAARP project which specialises in weather control and other sinister forms of kooky warfare?
Conspiracy 3: Did you know that the Indian Cricket Board, presumably funded by the country’s ever-scheming intelligence agencies, framed the Pakistani team in that spot-fixing spat?
Conspiracy 4: Did you know that Osama bin Laden is living in Washington DC, enjoying Jersey Shore reruns with some friends while munching on pizza?
Conspiracy 5: Did you know that Dr Aafia Siddiqi was secretly sabotaged by the Pakistani government and that the guys in Islamabad got a big fat cheque for helping ‘set an example out for muslims worldwide’?
Believe it or not, I heard all these morsels of hidden truth in the space of maybe three to four days.
Here’s what I know: We’re not the centre of the world. The centre of paranoia, maybe, but not much else. We need to stop blaming other, secret forces for our troubles. No, they are not out to get us. We just need a scapegoat so that we can pin our troubles and general lack of progression on someone.
But then again, you never know. I’m probably commissioned by the Jewish lobby to lull the Pakistani public into a false sense of security.
This article from February 2010 paints a scary picture of a nuclear armed state rife with conspiracy theories..
Pakistan: Conspiracy Talk Stokes Anti-American Sentiment - TIME
Pakistanis See a Vast U.S. Conspiracy Against Them
From the Pakistani army barracks to the roadside chai stands along the Indus River where truckers gulp down cups of muddy tea, anti-Americanism is roiling across the country. It is whipped up by the often sensationalist, ratings-hungry Pakistani TV news talk shows — think of Fox News cranked up to full volume, in Urdu. It resounds from the mosques, in virulent anti-U.S. sermons during Friday prayers. But most ominously, according to Islamabad observers, this deep suspicion of America's intentions in the region seems to be shared by elements within Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence services.
Here's a sample of a few conspiracy theories making the rounds: the U.S. military has a secret plan to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal; more than 9,000 agents of Blackwater, the U.S. security company, now called Xe Services, are roaming the country like bogeymen, at the CIA's behest, kidnapping people and setting off bombs that are later blamed on Pakistani Taliban militants; B-52 bombers are constantly circling the skies over Pakistan, waiting to strike when the signal is given (to strike what is never exactly clear from the rumors). (See a video about bomb threats against Pakistani schoolchildren.)
Even as the wild speculation circulates, U.S. diplomats are harassed in real life by Pakistani authorities. Their vehicles are seized and their visas tangled in bureaucratic red tape for months, crippling aid projects and counterinsurgency efforts. Sometimes photos of their residences are published in newspapers and labeled as CIA dens. American journalists, too, are singled out. Last October, an English-language Lahore newspaper, The Nation, accused a Wall Street Journal correspondent of working simultaneously for the CIA, the Israeli spy agency Mossad and, to top it off, Blackwater. A Pakistani daily also ran a photo of two British and Australian journalists at the site of a suicide bombing and insinuated that they were foreign spies.
This anti-U.S. resentment strikes many in Washington as a tad ungrateful — not to mention misplaced — given that last fall, Congress enacted the Kerry-Lugar bill granting Pakistan over $7.5 billion in economic aid over the next five years. In addition, Pakistan receives military hardware and training to combat Pakistani Taliban — whose wrath is focused on Islamabad — in the mountainous borderlands with Afghanistan.
So what gives?
Pakistan has long been characterized as a country whose rulers may be pro-American but whose people are decidedly not. In 1979, for example, Pakistani radio falsely reported that U.S. aircraft bombed Islam's holiest site in Mecca, prompting a mob to storm the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, killing five American and Pakistani staffers. This simmering hostility was stirred again after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and boiled over, more recently, with drone missile strikes inside Pakistan's tribal territory in which dozens of suspected terrorists — and civilians — died. The Feb. 3 conviction in New York City of a Pakistani woman scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, nicknamed Lady al-Qaeda, on charges of trying to shoot Americans in Afghanistan has also ignited anger in Pakistan against the U.S. The verdict was decried by Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and lawmakers and sparked anti-U.S. protest rallies in Lahore. (See the case against Aafia Siddiqui.)
On top of that, Washington's latest act of largesse, the Kerry-Lugar bill, has unintentionally riled the Pakistani army. The billions came with strings attached. The generals opposed one of the conditions of the bill: that the U.S. must be satisfied that the Pakistani military was fighting terrorism and not, as the legislation said, "subverting the political and judicial processes of Pakistan." Says Talat Masood, a retired general and military analyst in Islamabad: "Some in the army think this is intrusive and a loss to our sovereignty."
Islamabad politicians and diplomats say that the military opposes any measure that might boost the current President, who was swept into power in 2008 on a sympathy vote for his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, assassinated the previous year. Zardari has been dogged by old corruption charges and his current administration has proved highly unpopular, allowing the army to take a commanding role in security and foreign affairs, and that includes dealing with Washington.(See the difficulties Pakistani journalists had covering the Siddiqui trial.)
The conditions for a perfect storm of anti-U.S. feeling have risen, according to Samina Ahmed, director for the International Crisis Group in Islamabad. "What we're seeing is a nexus between an irresponsible media, the mullahs and the military, which is using anti-Americanism to beat a weak civilian government on the head," she says. Ahmed suggests that while the Obama Administration may need the generals' support in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda — who have sanctuaries inside Pakistan's tribal territories — it should not falter in trying to prop up the country's civil institutions. Otherwise, she says, the root causes of illiteracy and poverty that have given rise to militancy in the country will never be tackled, and Pakistan will remain in its downward spiral.
Meanwhile, U.S. diplomats in Islamabad, instead of ignoring the outlandish whoppers on local TV news channels, are moving more swiftly to deny them before they spread and gain credence. Military analyst Masood suggests that the U.S. State and Defense officials who are constantly shuttling to Islamabad should offer the military assurance that Washington has no intention of meddling with their nuclear arsenal or with their defenses against rival neighbor India. "The Americans have to take measures that lower the paranoia. They have to persuade the army that the U.S. is not after Pakistan's nukes," he says. Given the fever pitch of suspicion that Pakistanis feel toward the U.S. these days, that may take a lot of persuasion.
So what would it take for Pakistanis and many other middle eastern societies to snap out of this pervasive siege mentality? I don't think solving Kashmir to its satisfaction will do the trick for Pakistan as the hate of India, Hindus, Jews etc is not essentially driven by territorial or theological disputes but by a powerful death instinct which defines Pakistan's identity, and in the Pakistani psyche, its survival..
Sorry for the rant but its my day off and I was absolutely exasperated by the comments on what I thought was a fair verdict on Babri (Mandir/Masjid side by side etc)
Peace
